Risk Aversion to Short Connections in Airline Itinerary Choice

Measuring Air Carrier Passengers’ Values of Time by Trip Component

“…Transfer connection time was studied in detail for air travel in research that suggested that each traveler determines an optimal amount of connection time that considers the likelihood of missing a connection, the benefits of having adequate time for such activities as eating, use of a phone, and dealing with personal comfort-all traded off against a desire to reduce overall travel times (25). The empirical work found that on average, air passengers perceive additional benefits from up to 15 min above the minimum connection times allowed by airlines, but these benefits gradually turn to disbenefits as connection times grow beyond 15 min.…”

Depeaking Schedules

“…Banked schedules also entailed inefficient usage of airport infra structure and airline resources: airlines needed their aircraft to arrive simultaneously, a condition that required increases in staff, crew, and equipment during this period. However, having sufficient resources on hand to serve the peak is inefficient because, during the periods between banks, the staff, gates, and equipment sit idle (9). With reduced peak labor needs, workforce productivity increases and cost drop as services are spread through the day (3,7,10).…”

“…The traffic pattern during the banks was dominated by the hub airline's aircraft, and every few hours these peaks exceeded the airport service rate (1). Runway congestion from the bank of flights, along with the potential of having to wait for passengers running to make their connections, increased the delay for aircraft movements (4,9). The banked schedule also incurred a high cost because some aircraft dwell at the hub for a long time waiting for feeder flights to arrive into the bank.…”

“…In addition, the rise of Internet booking helped facilitate airlines' decisions to depeak. No longer were flight search results sorted by total elapsed time, as they had been previously on travel agent dis plays, but by price (9). The need no longer existed to minimize total elapsed time through a short connection for an itinerary to be listed higher on the screen (which resulted in a greater probability of an agent selling that itinerary).…”

“…If depeaking is a viable solution for the airline to cut its costs while maintaining revenue streams and meeting capacity limits, the airport operator receives benefits. Longer passenger connection times, characteristic of depeaked schedules, are related to increases in the number of passengers making retail purchases from vendors at the airport (9,(15)(16)(17). This passenger spending increases commercial revenue for the airport, as peakschedule connecting passengers typ ically are rushing to gates and do not have time to make purchases in the airport.…”